This is an example of a little house with thatched roof. Only hundred years ago,
a brother of my greatgrandfather on mother's side, August De Roo, lived in it.
The house stood in the Thijskensstraat in Kleit, Maldegem.

Roofing
in prehistoric times

Although straw
used to be the normal roofing material on farms and other houses, there is little
known about the craft of the thatcher before 1500. Yet, houses with roofing
made out of straw can be found back in the prehistory. A step back in time:

In the old stone
age (until 8.000 BC) Neanderthal men crossed our province. In Ghent, but also
in Maldegem artifacts were found from the late paleolithicum (35.000-11.500
BC)

But in the neolithicum,
the late stone age, the lifestyle of the human changed, from food collector
to food producer. In 4500 BC, the first farm communities arise with their typical
long houses.

These farmers lived
in villages with a population of 50 to 150 inhabitants. They built big wooden
long houses.
Experimental archeologists reconstructed these houses, to discover that only
one house could be built by six men in six months.

Anne Duhameeuw
writes:

We assume that
these constructions in the stone age were made in the spring and summer months,
and the thatchers covered the roofs with straw, a product of the harvest at
the end of the summer.

Straw was not only
used for roofing, but they made some sort of mortar containing both straw and
loam to cover the walls.

In the earliest
Iron age (7th Century BC) discoveries of certain urns point to the existence
of highly developed shield roofs.

In Burkel (south
of Maldegem) during the 1990's, evidence was found that indicated the existence
of a settlement. The settlement was built between 1500 BC and 1100 BC. And in
Maldegem there were pieces found of yet another settlement. The pieces found
here point to different periods in time, the Bronze age (1800 BC), the Iron
age and even the Roman period.

In Bruges they
discovered an axe, dated 1600 BC. In Aalter a burial field where the oldest
graves go back to 1200 BC and still remained in use until 600 BC.

The Menapiers who
populated these parts at the time of the Roman conquests in Flanders, were according
to estimates, few in number. Only 30.000, spread out over these parts.

Around the beginning
of our Christian chronology, the sea slowly pulled back, and the land became
more suited for living, especially with newly formed dunes to protect them.
The connection between the sea and what was to become Bruges was insured by
a natural bay.

Roofing
in medieval cities and villages

Thatchers at work on a painting of Bruegel

Clemens Trefois refers to drawings in manuscripts from the 9th and 10th Century
where very detailed roofs made out of straw were displayed. And again on peculiar
calendars from the 14th and 15th Century. When we look closer at the paintings
of, for example, Bruegel, Teniers or Adriaan Brouwer we discover a lot of houses
with straw roofs.

The actual thatcher
techniques were probably developed in the Middle Ages, where the technical finishing
of the roof was even more improved under the pressure of the urban crafts.

In the 14th Century,
Ghent still possessed a lot of wooden houses covered with straw. Even the high,
steep roofs of the more expensive houses were still covered with straw, until
the 15th Century when tiled or slated roofs became a privilege for the rich.

The
Craft of the Thatcher

The craft of the
Master thatcher was first introduced in the 12th Century. In the beginning of
the 14th Century the thatcher trade was founded alongside the other trades.
Within the medieval cities unions of specialized manual workers were founded:
the trades or crafts with their own rights and obligations. The archives of
Antwerp state the existence of this trade in 1306. In Bruges the building trade
was the second largest one, only outnumbered by the artisans of Bruges. The
building trade included a number of crafts. The bricklayers, the stucco workers,
the sawyers, the carpenters, the blacksmiths, the plumbers and finally the thatchers.

None of these crafts
were ever as big in numbers as the ones in the textile industry.

In 1338-40 the
building trade had 686 men under its wing, which was about 10% of the total.
The carpenters were the largest group with 197 men.

Unfortunately,
we could not find any further information on the thatcher trade in Bruges. In
Ghent the first mention of a thatcher trade was in 1336. The trade counted,
according to city calculations, about 43 thatchers. The escutcheon of the thatchers
of Ghent is shown below.

The thatchers
in Ghent

Slaters
and tilers slowly push the thatcher away

In about every
city in the Low Countries (the Netherlands and Flanders) these craftsmen had
to face a lot of problems. To prevent huge fires the city magistrates often
had to take drastic measures. In the first half of the 14th Century there were
62 fires in 14 years located in Gent. So about 4, 5 a year.

But the "stroedeckers"
(Flemish dialect for thatchers) weren't pushed away that easily by the slaters
and tilers. For many years they kept on controlling their profession with approbation.

The year 1378 is
historically important because of the incorporation of the thatchers with the
tiler trade. Two years later, in 1380, they managed to restore their rights.

But in 1416 only
15 of the 38 thatchers could exercise their profession.
The complete ban in 1416 to exercise their profession in the city, and the lack
of any regulations concerning a roof made out of straw until 1540, proves that
the measures were effective. Of course, that didn't mean that these measures
and laws were never broken.

Despite the ban,
many houses in the 16th century, especially in the environment of Ghent, still
had their thatched roofs.

Even in the 17th
Century many roofs were still being thatched. Evidence provided for this statement
is the city regulation of 09.02.1619. In this statement is written that anyone
who violated the ban would be punished.

The attempts to
forbid the thatching of roofs were of course not unjust. Many huge fires with
a certain amount of victims illustrate this.
The law to forbid the covering of roofs with straw wasn't made everywhere at
the same time: in Bruges in 1374, Doornik 1432, Utrecht around 1614, and in
Eeklo in 1660.
In Bruges they would give people who replaced their thatched roofs with tiles
a financial compensation.

In the "History
of the little man" we read:

"It was mostly
the upper class who could keep these measures in account. The craftsmen were
already happy if they could pay their rent on time. That is why only the market
places and the renowned streets changed looks. The small alleys and streets,
where the poor lived, didn't change at all."

Despite these extreme
measures, the thatchers who lived in Ghent could maintain their position. In
1525 the number of thatchers was as big as in 1356 (23 members)!

The rebellion of
the "creesers" made an end to the independence of the thatchers in
their guilds. Emperor Charles grouped the 53 big and little crafts in 21 trades.
The thatchers were grouped in the 13th corporation.
Within this group they were at the bottom of the social ladder.

Until the second
half of the 18th Century, the thatchers from Gent exercised their craft only
to a limited extent.
The board of the thatchers consisted at that time of two jurymen. Ironically
they were also the only thatchers left. So the thatcher trade didn't mean much
during the 17th and 18th Century, although it remained an independent trade
until the end of the "Ancien Regime."
But the French Revolution made a definite end to the traditional trades.

Life standard
and wages

The building trades
in Ghent could be divided into three groups.

The blacksmiths,
the carpenters and the woodbreakers consisted of the first wealthy group.
The second group consisted of the painters, the tilers, the bricklayers, the
stonecutters, the joiners, the sculptors and a couple of others.
The third and poorest group consisted of the plumbers, the woodsawyers, the
thatchers and a few other lesser known crafts.

Most trades possessed
a trade house of their own, except the "onbemiddelden", like the thatchers.
Still the thatchers were represented through their trade in the government of
Ghent until 1540.
But those positions in the government were never filled by thatchers themselves.
That honor usually went to bricklayers or carpenters.

Although the period
between 1380 and 1540 was a prosperous one, it was still a struggle for survival
for those on the bottom of the social ladder. When, in certain years the price
of grain lifted, the poor trades had to face sickness and malnutrition.

From an Ordinance
in 1588, we learn that the master thatchers received 18 gr a day and their servants
12 gr. A bricklayer or a stonecutter got 26 gr. a day and their servants 16
gr. A plumber received 20 gr. (Gr is short for big silvercoins.)

The wages in Ghent
were 15 % higher in the 17th and 18th Century when compared with wages in other
smaller cities.

Working
circumstances

In late medieval
Ghent, a year counted 235 working days. Then there were the Sundays, the half
Saturdays and the 50 high days. A winter wage consisted of 60 to 80% of the
summer wage, because of the shortened days in wintertime.
Absenteeism was punished financially fairly heavily. In the ordinances of all
building trades from 1541, it states that when the workmen didn't show up in
time, the masters had the right to deduct the lost time from their pay.
For instance, they could deduct 1 gr. for every lost hour from the pay of a
workman and a 1/2 gr. from the pay of a server. The phrase "time is money"
began to work its way into society.

The
thatchers in the country.

The thatchers who
exercised their profession in the countryside were not united by trades.
In the history of Maldegem, apart from a few exceptions, we have found little
mention of such a craft!

What is interesting
though, is the inventory of the estate of Marijn Blanckaert, deceased in Maldegem
on 30 October 1633, that Daniel Verstraete reports about. Verstraete leaves
us the impression that Marijn could have been a thatcher.

Marijn Blanckaert
was married to Katelijne Schokaert (daughter of Jan Schokaert) and lived in
the hamlet Eede (now part of the Netherlands), which was still on the property
of Maldegem.

Out of a state
of goods, we can assume that there were two children from a first marriage,
Jooris and Boudewijn Blanckaert, and Lieven Blanckaert, from the second marriage.

After his death,
they made the inventory of all his property:

A thatcher
in action

Wooden tubs, chairs,
table, a cutting knife, a sickle, a "wentelhaspe", two "haumessen",
three pronged forks, shovels, axes, flails, a roster, a pincer, a burner, a
sewing basket, a market basket, a "hekei", .

What interests
us most is that farmer Blankaert had thatcher tools in his possession.
Did these tools serve for small repair of his own roof, or were they used to
gather straw on the land? Or was he a farmer-thatcher, like many in those days,
who combined a craft with owning and working on their own lands. We also notice
that Marijn didn't have that much land.

Daniel Verstraete
also reports that when the homestead of Gillis Blondeel was sold in 1702, the
buildings were estimated by carpenter Boudewijn van Maldegem, the blacksmith
Adriaan Willems, the thatcher Cornelis De Suttere and bricklayer Jacques Walgraeve.

In "The History
of Waarschoot", we read that in the 17th Century four thatchers were known
in Waarschoot. Out of the state of goods, we conclude that he had but few possessions.
The bricklayers themselves didn't have that much, so they combined their craft
with running a small homestead. We also noticed that thatcher tools weren't
worth that much, although the thatching of homesteads and big barns is an art
form on itself.

In 1509, the Beguine
estate in the "Diefhoek" in Waarschoot possessed, apart from the normal
farm buildings, also a cheese and pigeon house. To cover this all up with straw,
there were 4200 bundles needed.